Bazzrite

Nocentelli · Post by **Nocentelli** » 10 Jun 2015, 17:06

I got tired of bread-boarding elaborate circuits for hours and having them not work, so i threw this together in a hurry knowing it would do something, and I was pleased with the resulting sounds:

The mix pot pans between stock bazz fuss at minimum, through a varied palette of graunchy out-of-phase fuzzy sounds complete with weird filtery/phase-shifty decay, and when turned fully up you get a reasonably sustaining high gain fuzz. It's got good clean-up with the guitar's volume too, though this is much better if you plug the guitar straight in (i.e. no buffer in front of the Bazzrite).

I tried 3mm red LEDs first, and got a strong sub-octave on the initial attack of the note (oddly this was strongest, and only really prominent at the 7th fret) but it decays a bit too fast and is somewhat erratic actually be a feature - It also turns chords into a mangled mess so I didn't bother pursuing it. Might be worth putting on a switch, though.

Ripdivot · Post by **Ripdivot** » 10 Jun 2015, 18:09

Interesting, I might give this a try just to hear the out of phase sounds in the middle portion of the mix pot. Often these simple circuits can be a lot of fun. Maybe it would be cool to try a dual ganged pot in series with the diodes so you could blend in how much you like. Another option might be to add a cap in series with the diodes to tweak the frequency response of the clipping. Just thinking out loud.

Nocentelli · Post by **Nocentelli** » 11 Jun 2015, 05:31

Ripdivot wrote:Interesting, I might give this a try just to hear the out of phase sounds in the middle portion of the mix pot.

You get a significant dip in output level as the pot moves towards the middle due to phase cancellation, but there is easily enough available to compensate by upping the volume control.

marmora · Post by **marmora** » 20 Jun 2015, 00:17

Some similarities to this design:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/753 ... g_rev2.pdf

Nocentelli · Post by **Nocentelli** » 20 Jun 2015, 08:31

Almost identical. I'd not seen that before, but I recognise user earthscum from DIYSB, seen to recall he posted a number of cool but fairly simple designs.

I wonder if the higher collector-resistor and mix pot values might help reduce the volume dip in the middle?

marmora · Post by **marmora** » 20 Jun 2015, 21:08

Nocentelli wrote:Almost identical. I'd not seen that before, but I recognise user earthscum from DIYSB, seen to recall he posted a number of cool but fairly simple designs.

I wonder if the higher collector-resistor and mix pot values might help reduce the volume dip in the middle?

I played with the design recently and I'm pretty sure there is still a volume dip. Still fun to play with though, don't want to discourage anyone from playing with this.
I also played around with the two 470k resistors that go to the collectors. Instead I used a 1M pot to vary the resistance and got even more sounds out of this simple, but neat, circuit.
I wish the original schematic image was still around. It was a wonderfully symmetric layout.
Cheers to you Nocentelli, please update us if you experiment more.

PS Where did Earthscum go? He did have some cool Escobedo style simple circuits.

FiveseveN · Post by **FiveseveN** » 21 Jun 2015, 09:11

marmora wrote:I wish the original schematic image was still around.

Here it is, if it's OK to post it here: